Guest Article
Bringing Back the Muses
by John Beaulieu of BioSonic Academy, High Falls, New York, USA
The study and practice of the arts develops within us an ability to appreciate the subtleties of sound, color, movement, touch, taste, and rhythm. Artistry makes life worth living. The spatial and visual arrangement of foods is as important as taste for the Japanese. The flow and movement of the Chinese martial art Tai Chi Chaun are far more important than learning how to defeat an opponent. Tai Chi Master Ching Man Ching, perhaps the greatest martial artist of the 20th century was also a master poet, calligrapher, painter, and doctor.
A massage with a sense of flow and rhythm becomes a special “work of art”. Without these qualities massage is a mechanical preprogrammed event. I call this type of massage the health club rub. A doctor with a sense of timing and resonance in his voice brings a healing “bedside manner”. Without sensitivity a doctor speaks with the quality of hospital food; processed and thrown together without sensitivity to color, taste, and smell.
A sense of personal artistry creates a necessary foundation for a scientist to do their work. Albert Einstein discovered the theory of relativity while playing his violin. Playing music led him into creative understandings of the universe which he then translated into numbers. He carried his violin with him wherever he went. Scientists without a sense of artistry are technicians who know what will happen if they press a button. How they press the button, the process of being present to press the button, and their relationship to their environment while they press the button are unimportant.
The nourishment of artistic qualities in athletics is important. Amy Alcott of the Ladies Professional Golf Association refers to herself as an artist when she plays golf. She talks about her training in music and painting as a necessary preparation for appreciating the subtleties of choices to be made during a round of golf. For her, playing golf is like painting a picture.
As artists we are responsible for the quality and flow of our personal life. I have always had a meta sense of my life as a work of art. Beyond my daily chores, hurts, pains and joys I am always creating dreams, intrigues, and journeys. As long as I have this awareness I can enjoy life and remain healthy. When I lose track of the creativity and art in my life I sense myself as sleep walking through a cold, mechanized, and uncaring world.
Journeying beyond our personality we discover multi-directional multi-dimensional energy swirls, whirlpools, dips, slides, rises, drifting and flowing; returning, pushing, and simultaneously pulling us into a gateway of pulsating space bounded by sensitive thoughts. Full of floating emotions expanding outwards through permeable layers of visions bursting into reds, oranges, yellows, greens, blues, indigos and violets that swirl, slide, dip, rise, flow into multi directional multi dimensional movements that softly bring us back to our personality and whisper: Remember the art and joy of being alive.
©1992, John Beaulieu, N.D., Ph.D.